The Land Of the Lost & the Bowling Alley
I guess I am pretty lucky that my parents STILL live in the same old house that I grew up in. Of course as a child I never thought that. I wanted to move more that anything in the whole wide world. I would lay in bed at night and actually pray about it. All my friends had way cooler houses, newer houses, and some were even so lucky that they had two story houses. Oh how I longed to have stairs I could slide down one at a time while sitting on my but. My dad was a house painter so on the weekends he would pile the entire family into the old white station wagon with midnight blue interior and drive us out to these far away neighborhoods to see these houses he was working on. HUGE houses just being build with vaulted ceilings and laundry could be done right inside the house! Everytime we pulled up to these houses I would get my hopes up. Would this be the day my dad would FINALLY announce, "Okay family... I just wanted to get your approval because this is the house we will be moving into."... Nope, never happened- and each time, no matter how old I got, I would pitch a fit when we had to get back into the car- pouting the entire way home.
Well this Christmas when I returned home to my parents tacky little yellow single story house on the corner, I stood out front with my new husband and started looking around at my familar surroundings and I began to tell him stories about growing up there and you know what? It wasn't so bad after all. I thought I would take a few pictures and share them, along with the stories behind them and give you a little glance into my childhood.
My parents built the house I grew up in (so why the hell didn't they build us a 2 story!!) When they first bought the plot of land we were the only house on the entire block. For some weird reason before they built anything they knocked down everything but left this little patch of (what do I even want to call this? Its not a forrest)- trees. This was the 70's. My sister Lisa and I spent allot of time watching Saturday morning cartoons. Marty Kroft had a run of great TV shows that had us glued to the TV for hours on end but it was "the Land Of The Lost" that suddenly made our little corner of the block the cool place to be. Suddenly all the kids in the neighborhood wanted to come over and join my sister and I where we made a game out of our favorite TV show. I mean where else in the city were you going to find these massive cluster of trees that instead of leaves had these dropping sting like things? It seemed so prehistoric to all of us. Everything went smoothly for quiet a while but the more kids that joined, the less 'staring roles" became available and fights insued. No one ever wanted to play the Sleestaks. They were lizard men and all they ever could say were snake like hissing words. It became worse for me when my sister decided to cast me in the role of Cha-Ka, the hair covered ape child that acted almost as a slave to everyone involved. I have no idea why my entire childhood I allowed my sister to 'choose' roles for me. When we watched TV we had this weird habit of trying to shout out the character that we would be if we were really living on the show. Part of the draw to doing this was to think fast and yell louder than the other sibling. My sister was not only a master at this 'game' but then always went on to pick out the shittest character to be me... AND I TOOK IT (lol ... I never said I was a bright child).
There came that time in childhood where marbles became all the rage. My family didn't have allot of money and they refused to buy us marbles at the grocery store so we had to save our allowance and hope someone had a handful for sale at the swap meet. We also didn't have marble bags like all the kids had at school. My sister lucked out and got an awesome blue velvet like bag with a gold rope draw string (which as an adult I now know it was the bag from around my dad's bottle of Crown Royal. I can only imagine what our teachers must have thought when my sister got to school and dropped that bag on the top of her desk! We couldn't afford new marbles but dad had his booze). I was more like Charlie Brown... I had to carry mine in one of my dad's old gym socks, my name written on the sock in black magic marker.
At recess all the kids would sprinkle their marbles out and want to trade. They had names like,"Clearys","Steelys","birdcages," etc and the goal was to end up with the best looking marble collection. Fuck playing with them like they were meant for, it was all about what you had and how many. I felt defeated as when you buy marbles at the Swapmeet, you were never going to get the top of the line marbles.
I came home one day and my sister was on the set of "land of the Lost" (the front corner of our yard) digging in the dirt... not just digging but REALLY consintrating. My sister never did anything that would allow her to get dirt on her pristine clothes so I knew something BIG was happening. "What Cha doing?" I asked. I half expected her to hiss and send me inside crying as thats how things work when you are the younger sibling. Instead she glanced up at me with this crooked smile on her face and asked me if I had my marbles with me. D'uh, of course I did.
"Excellent, "she says. She revealed the small patch of dirt she was so carefully crafting. It wasn't much to look at. In fact it was made up to look like a minature bowling alley complete with gutters along the side. "The cost to play," she tells me, "is one marble." ME:"any marble?" LISA:"Yes... the goal of the game is to shoot your marble down the middle and any of my marbles (the pins) you hit out of the back, is yours to keep.... BUT if your marble rolls into the gutter, the game is over and I keep that marble." It sounded so easy! There was no way I could loose, the lane wasn't even that long!
I pulled out my first marble, Lined it up and flicked it down the lane. As it tumbled forward, kicking up small tuffs of dirt as it went, it headed straight down the lane and then suddenly veered off into the gutter. I had lost. I frowned, disappointed. To my complete shock Lisa picked up my marble and handed it back to me. "Try again.. go ahead. No charge." This went on 3 or 4 times and each time the marble roll started out with such promise and then tumbled off into the same side gutter.I knew I was a great marble player. We may not have played on a regular basis at school but I practiced allot on my own and there was no way I was missing so many easy shots. My sister handed the marble back to me. "want to know a secret?," she asked me standing up, dusting her hands off and coming around to my side," Its a trick... look here.." and with this she proceeded to show me how she shaved the dirt down ever so slightly so that no mater where I shot from, or how perfect I flicked the marble, it was always going to roll into the gutter. It was devious but ever so brillant. "Here is where you come in...."
My job was to gather all the kids in the neighborhood and entice to play a game of marble bowling. Getting them to come was easy. They all lined up at the foot of the stairway leading up to our yard, excited with marble bags in hand, all cackling and talking about how they were going to win "all the marbles". I would hold court while collecting the single marble entry fee (which ended up becoming a steely, the most valuable of all marbles) and allow them to enter one child at a time. Each kid stayed up in the "Land" with my sister for long stretches of time and then defeated they would slowly decend down the stairs, empty bag in hand, head hanging low, and disappear back to their houses. Everytime someone left, the crowd would get even more excited as this meant even more marbles for them to win but I knew the truth. By the end of the afternoon the block and stairs to our yard was left empty. My sister and I gathered in the living room where on the green shag carpeting she poured out the most magnificent pile of sparkling glass you have ever seen. At last we had all the best marbles the world had to offer. We felt we had finally come into our own... that is until the next time we wanted to play marbles with the kids on our block and no one besides us had any marbles to play with. We had somehow managed to fuck ourselves. Thank goodness kids attention spans nerver stay put for very long and it wouldn't be long before skate boards and bikes came into the picture.
Well this Christmas when I returned home to my parents tacky little yellow single story house on the corner, I stood out front with my new husband and started looking around at my familar surroundings and I began to tell him stories about growing up there and you know what? It wasn't so bad after all. I thought I would take a few pictures and share them, along with the stories behind them and give you a little glance into my childhood.
My parents built the house I grew up in (so why the hell didn't they build us a 2 story!!) When they first bought the plot of land we were the only house on the entire block. For some weird reason before they built anything they knocked down everything but left this little patch of (what do I even want to call this? Its not a forrest)- trees. This was the 70's. My sister Lisa and I spent allot of time watching Saturday morning cartoons. Marty Kroft had a run of great TV shows that had us glued to the TV for hours on end but it was "the Land Of The Lost" that suddenly made our little corner of the block the cool place to be. Suddenly all the kids in the neighborhood wanted to come over and join my sister and I where we made a game out of our favorite TV show. I mean where else in the city were you going to find these massive cluster of trees that instead of leaves had these dropping sting like things? It seemed so prehistoric to all of us. Everything went smoothly for quiet a while but the more kids that joined, the less 'staring roles" became available and fights insued. No one ever wanted to play the Sleestaks. They were lizard men and all they ever could say were snake like hissing words. It became worse for me when my sister decided to cast me in the role of Cha-Ka, the hair covered ape child that acted almost as a slave to everyone involved. I have no idea why my entire childhood I allowed my sister to 'choose' roles for me. When we watched TV we had this weird habit of trying to shout out the character that we would be if we were really living on the show. Part of the draw to doing this was to think fast and yell louder than the other sibling. My sister was not only a master at this 'game' but then always went on to pick out the shittest character to be me... AND I TOOK IT (lol ... I never said I was a bright child).
There came that time in childhood where marbles became all the rage. My family didn't have allot of money and they refused to buy us marbles at the grocery store so we had to save our allowance and hope someone had a handful for sale at the swap meet. We also didn't have marble bags like all the kids had at school. My sister lucked out and got an awesome blue velvet like bag with a gold rope draw string (which as an adult I now know it was the bag from around my dad's bottle of Crown Royal. I can only imagine what our teachers must have thought when my sister got to school and dropped that bag on the top of her desk! We couldn't afford new marbles but dad had his booze). I was more like Charlie Brown... I had to carry mine in one of my dad's old gym socks, my name written on the sock in black magic marker.
At recess all the kids would sprinkle their marbles out and want to trade. They had names like,"Clearys","Steelys","birdcages," etc and the goal was to end up with the best looking marble collection. Fuck playing with them like they were meant for, it was all about what you had and how many. I felt defeated as when you buy marbles at the Swapmeet, you were never going to get the top of the line marbles.
I came home one day and my sister was on the set of "land of the Lost" (the front corner of our yard) digging in the dirt... not just digging but REALLY consintrating. My sister never did anything that would allow her to get dirt on her pristine clothes so I knew something BIG was happening. "What Cha doing?" I asked. I half expected her to hiss and send me inside crying as thats how things work when you are the younger sibling. Instead she glanced up at me with this crooked smile on her face and asked me if I had my marbles with me. D'uh, of course I did.
"Excellent, "she says. She revealed the small patch of dirt she was so carefully crafting. It wasn't much to look at. In fact it was made up to look like a minature bowling alley complete with gutters along the side. "The cost to play," she tells me, "is one marble." ME:"any marble?" LISA:"Yes... the goal of the game is to shoot your marble down the middle and any of my marbles (the pins) you hit out of the back, is yours to keep.... BUT if your marble rolls into the gutter, the game is over and I keep that marble." It sounded so easy! There was no way I could loose, the lane wasn't even that long!
I pulled out my first marble, Lined it up and flicked it down the lane. As it tumbled forward, kicking up small tuffs of dirt as it went, it headed straight down the lane and then suddenly veered off into the gutter. I had lost. I frowned, disappointed. To my complete shock Lisa picked up my marble and handed it back to me. "Try again.. go ahead. No charge." This went on 3 or 4 times and each time the marble roll started out with such promise and then tumbled off into the same side gutter.I knew I was a great marble player. We may not have played on a regular basis at school but I practiced allot on my own and there was no way I was missing so many easy shots. My sister handed the marble back to me. "want to know a secret?," she asked me standing up, dusting her hands off and coming around to my side," Its a trick... look here.." and with this she proceeded to show me how she shaved the dirt down ever so slightly so that no mater where I shot from, or how perfect I flicked the marble, it was always going to roll into the gutter. It was devious but ever so brillant. "Here is where you come in...."
My job was to gather all the kids in the neighborhood and entice to play a game of marble bowling. Getting them to come was easy. They all lined up at the foot of the stairway leading up to our yard, excited with marble bags in hand, all cackling and talking about how they were going to win "all the marbles". I would hold court while collecting the single marble entry fee (which ended up becoming a steely, the most valuable of all marbles) and allow them to enter one child at a time. Each kid stayed up in the "Land" with my sister for long stretches of time and then defeated they would slowly decend down the stairs, empty bag in hand, head hanging low, and disappear back to their houses. Everytime someone left, the crowd would get even more excited as this meant even more marbles for them to win but I knew the truth. By the end of the afternoon the block and stairs to our yard was left empty. My sister and I gathered in the living room where on the green shag carpeting she poured out the most magnificent pile of sparkling glass you have ever seen. At last we had all the best marbles the world had to offer. We felt we had finally come into our own... that is until the next time we wanted to play marbles with the kids on our block and no one besides us had any marbles to play with. We had somehow managed to fuck ourselves. Thank goodness kids attention spans nerver stay put for very long and it wouldn't be long before skate boards and bikes came into the picture.